cigarette diary
by public enemy no. 5
Summary: how he loved an alien. —lars/amethyst


a/n: kinda ooc. also some drug use, sex, general teenage vulgarity, etc.

* * *

_You were nervous the first time you had sex. The two of you were at your apartment at her request - she'd said something about the non-Euclidean geometry in the Gems' hideout being dangerous to humans who were exposed to it for too long - and she was lying on your bed, with a pile of magazines shoved into an ungainly pile near your guitar, an empty pizza box covered with a throw rug, and your comforter dog-eared over her stomach._

_She was staring at you with that faintly amused look she always had on, an ambiguous kind of look that bespoke both arrogance and adoration. You tried to decipher it. Maybe she found the stars on your boxers lame. Maybe you still smelled like stale pastry from working at the Big Donut. Fuck, when had you last shaved down there? Was she into hair, or did she prefer guys trimmed? A vague memory of the time you decided to measure your dick on a whim - 6 inches, give or take a few - __came to mind, leading you to consider your sexual prowess beyond the context of online pornos and Playboys and in the context of the girl in your room._

_You wondered if you were her first like she was yours, whether she'd left an alien boyfriend behind when she came to Earth or maybe - just maybe - she was as terrified as you were. If she was, her face didn't show it. _

_"Well," she said, popping your introspective bubble with a grin and a laugh, "are you going to stand there all night, or are we going to do this?"_

* * *

If he were to be given a prompt and fifteen minutes to write, disregarding grammatical structure and syntax and organization and judicious selection of literary features, and the prompt was - _"One quality about an important person in your life that stands out to you the most (physical or personality-wise)"_ \- he would write about the way she always smelled like fruit chewing gum.

* * *

Her height is 5'3" tall. He's 6 feet and growing. One time, he put his elbow on her head and joked that she was the perfect height for a barstool, to which she responded by punching him in the face.

She still enjoys asking him how the weather up there is, though.

* * *

"I don't believe in favorite foods."

He's more and more inclined to believe that she actually means it because he's rarely seen her turn down anything, even gross stuff like brussels sprouts or corned beef or broccoli. Clearly, it's not just a junk food thing, or is it? Maybe she's the kind of person to blend her veggies up in smoothies with a ton of yogurt and sugary stuff to force them down, or maybe she slips them into Steven's snacks when he isn't looking - like brownies with kale or something else inside. That makes him snicker.

* * *

When she sleeps over, she always manages to steal off with one of his t-shirts. He doesn't really mind.

* * *

The sexiest part about her (to him) is her right shoulder.

* * *

Diner napkin with a smudged game of tic-tac-toe in blue pen, spare change for ice cream, an old sweater, a mismatched pair of socks, pictures of them behind one of those cheesy cutout scenes you'd find at a fair - all mementos.

* * *

"Do you remember how you were born?"

It was late evening, the sun setting - orange and yolky - just through the window, both of them sprawled on his couch. At the time, he hadn't noticed anything strange, but later, he wondered if he'd overlooked something (and it wouldn't be surprising, because he was prone to overlooking a lot of things) - a stiffening in her posture, a subtle reservedness to the way she spoke to him afterward and into the rest of the night. But she'd left him for the next two days, off with the rest of the Gems on some crazy mission of theirs, and when she came back, she didn't say anything, just hugged him and asked him how he was. He had the good sense to leave it at that.

* * *

He wishes she cared more. He wishes she cared less.

* * *

After 12 PM, the shop kind of hits a slump and doesn't pick up again until 7 or 8 in the evening, when everyone gets the late-night munchies and flocks to the Donut for their sugary snack of choice. Steven doesn't come around as much anymore because he's usually off training or on some weird adventure; he'd never say it out loud, of course, but he kind of misses the doofus. Like, you get used to seeing the kid so much that he sorta blends in with the background, becomes a fixture in the way things are supposed to go, and you feel it on a vague peripheral level when he's not there.

Outside, behind the back door, he leans against the wall and lights a cigarette. He exhales a cloud of smoke, inartistic, no rings or frills. Routine.

He hears the door swing, Sadie sighing as she falls into place next to him, hands crossed behind her head. Idly, he picks out a chocolate stain on her employee t-shirt which isn't shaped like anything at all.

"Did you lock up the register?" she asks him.

"No." He frowns. "Why?"

Sadie groans. "Ugh, jeez Lars. You can't just leave it - okay fine, whatever. _I'll_ do it."

The door creaks open again as Sadie goes back inside to fix up what he's left undone. In the meantime, he smokes and looks at the row of buildings behind the shop, at the cars parked bumper-to-bumper in the street, colors partitioned and doled out like the tiny ice cube tray popsicles his aunt used to make. A flock of gulls caw as they burst from the harbor up into the air, a pop of feathers and sound.

"Company policy," grumbles Sadie, returning. "C'mon, you should know better."

"Aw, what's the worst that could happen anyway? Someone makes off with twenty-something? It's not even 3 yet, Sades, no one's gonna rob us."

She crosses her arms. "Well, it's been getting weird around here. Not really sure who or _what's _out there anymore."

"Hmm." Well, he's got an idea.

Coughing, Sadie scolds him. "God, you're going to choke to death on those things one day." She wrinkles her nose, fanning the fumes away. "You mind?"

"Don't see why you'd care if I choked on something, but sure." He stubs out the cigarette and flicks it into an empty crate, accepting a mint from Sadie.

They sit side-by-side on the curb, not touching, but they could, if they wanted to - if he did, if she did, he doesn't know. But Sadie is far from being Amethyst, and Amethyst farther still from being Sadie.

"How is she?"

"Huh?"

Sadie's fidgeting the way she does when she's trying to skirt around something awkward, addressing it without, you know, _addressing _it so bluntly. "Um. You know. Your girlfriend?"

"Meaning-?"

"Oh, quit it. You know who I mean." She gives him a terse half-smile as she plucks at a tear on her jeans. "Amethyst, right? That purple Gem, who's always hanging out with Steven? You guys are together, right?"

"Uh - yeah. Yeah, we are."

"So how is she? I mean, what's she _like_, Lars?" Sadie leans forward, head resting between her hands, listening intently.

"Um.." _What's she like_? How is he supposed to answer something as open-ended as that?

"She's..." He can picture her, the shape of her, the way she laughs and smiles and fights. "... really fucking cool."

It's inarticulate, but Sadie nods like she's been expecting that kind of answer all along. "You guys seem really happy together."

"Yeah. Yeah, we are. Hey, Sadie-"

She's got her arms around in a bear hug in a flash, and he's taken aback at first so he wriggles a bit but gradually leans into the embrace and places his arms around her waist too, even though it's a little weird.

"You okay?" he asks, uncomfortable, when he hears her sniff. Sadie jerks her head up and turns away, mouth slightly upturned. He can't see her face.

"I'm just happy for you, that's all." She claps him on the shoulder. "You deserve a girl like that."'

* * *

Buck Dewey passes him the joint, rolled tightly and expertly. The whole room smells like pot and fast food with an undercurrent of Febreze. He has a toke, and then hands it across to Amethyst, who tokes and exhales a warm, greenish-smelling cloud.

"This is rad," she pronounces.

Sour Cream, to his left, nudges his side. "Hey man, your girl's pretty chill."

"Uh-huh. She is."

* * *

Pearl catches them one morning, both woozy from a late night. He's still a bit hungover, so at first he doesn't register the fact that she's somehow entered his apartment and is screaming at Amethyst. Amethyst, wearing one of his hoodies, screams back, and they end up taking it outside.

By then, he's clear-headed enough to peer out the window and see the two of them really going at it - Pearl gesticulating crazily, Amethyst standing her ground and making sulky comments now and then. After Pearl storms off, Amethyst shouts something that might be a "Fuck off!" and heads down to the beach.

Does he chase after her? Does he leave her in peace, to vent in her own way without him bothering her? Shit. Well - he doesn't know.

* * *

"I don't give a fuck," she whispers to him, furious, pressing her love into the palm of his hand. "I don't give a fuck what Pearl thinks, what any of them think. They can't separate us."

"Amethyst-"

She tilts her head up, her eyes shining. "I mean it. I'll kill whoever tries."

* * *

"Are you scared?"

"Not of you."

* * *

He'd asked her out at first because he'd spent so much time being caught up in Steven's freaky alien shit that he thought, okay, why not? Afraid or not, she was - is - _cool_, in some strange, unshakable and mad way that he admired and shied away from, because he knew he could never be that kind of cool, the reckless kind that was (he begrudgingly admitted) the domain of Steven and the Gems. Not something to dip into, feeling the cold creep up your legs and making you squirm in your swim trunks, but a diving board to cannonball from and some body of water below, that splash, the impact, the threshold.

* * *

You're both shitty people who've done shitty things before, and there's no changing that. If you could see yourself on the street, the way you act sometimes, you think you'd do something about it. "Lars, you asshat!" you'd yell. "Quit dicking off!"

And your copy would flip you off, probably.

Yeah, so, you aren't a great guy. Even gem aliens from space - even they have those shitty, messy parts of themselves they like to keep hidden from view, even her. But at least you can both screw up together. You and Amethyst, two assholes - you get to make your mistakes, and regret them, and fix things, and you come away a little better off than you were before. Cleaner. Lighter.

* * *

Smoking a cigarette. She leans next to you and doesn't say anything, just looks at the full pack and makes her observations.

Today, you will smoke ten.

Next month, nine.

The month after that, seven.

So it goes and goes.

You'll kick the bad habits, with time.

* * *

_You were facing her, both of you sharing the same mattress, the same covers. Tentatively, you reached out and placed your hand over her chest, on the place where her gem was. It felt still and warm beneath your fingers, and so did she._

_She didn't tell you to move your hand away, so you kept it there and kept looking at her. She was looking back, eyes spacey; you wondered what part of you she was looking at, what she was thinking, what she wanted. _

_You were looking at this girl when you fell asleep. _


End file.
